re: OFFICIAL Week 7 CFB bet thread™

If you don't mind me asking, but you say you have a system that helps you predict scores. Is this some type of excel spreadsheet that you use equations to help you? I ask because this intrigues me a lot, just like the spreadsheet for 2H bets. If you'd rather keep it to yourself its all good.

Navy defense held a high flying San Jose St offense to just 12 points, their lowest on the year.

I think this Navy team is starting to come together. Central Michigan's defense is fricking shitastic, and will be absolutely gassed by the time the 4th quarter rolls around. I look for the time of possession to be heavily favored towards Navy tonight, as long as Central Michigan doesn't constantly give up big plays to the Midshipmen's running game.

Navy defense held a high flying San Jose St offense to just 12 points, their lowest on the year.

I think this Navy team is starting to come together. Central Michigan's defense is fricking shitastic, and will be absolutely gassed by the time the 4th quarter rolls around. I look for the time of possession to be heavily favored towards Navy tonight, as long as Central Michigan doesn't constantly give up big plays to the Midshipmen's running game.

And to add to that I'm sure some missed it but we said this earlier in the week as well.

quote:I don't see it moving anymore in our favor to be honest, it looks like a few sharps bet it down when the line came out and CMU isn't a team that the public is gonna bet up, just my opinion. It was down to +1 at one point I believe.

I really don't think it should matter, Navy should win this game outright.

Just to add to the strength of our play I've been playing around with some new Home Field Advantage ratings that im trying to incorporate and it takes games from the last 3 years into account. Central Michigan is ranked 122 out of 124 teams.

quote:How big are you playing this? I'm still weighing numbers ... debating on whether or not to make this one of my biggest plays of the year ...

It's hard to say. You can't outbet yourself on a Friday night with risk that if things don't go your way you won't have as much bankroll for the big slate tomorrow. Im looking at Navy 26-17, 28-20, type of game, the problem is both these teams can play sporadically. The matchups all favor Navy, but in overall quality of teams, they arent too far apart. Which means if Navy for some reason loses the turnover battle by two or more they will probably lose the game.

Coming into last night Troy was averaging giving away 3 turnovers a game, they played smart focused football and not only did they not turn the ball over but they also caused 2 (and almost a 3rd) fumbles and were very much in a game against what I considered a superior team.

It's hard to go on the road and cough the ball up two more times than your opponent and win much less cover a number.

quote:If you don't mind me asking, but you say you have a system that helps you predict scores. Is this some type of excel spreadsheet that you use equations to help you? I ask because this intrigues me a lot, just like the spreadsheet for 2H bets. If you'd rather keep it to yourself its all good.

I have somewhat of a problem

I have been creating spreadsheets to predict games for about 8 years now. There are about 100 different formulas and spreadsheets I have for just about any sport you can imagine. With that being said I did some extensive research on college football and things that have worked and things that haven't and started piecing together a "system" of spreadsheets I could count on to be reliable and useful information. Over the last two weeks I have worked on combining the information I need on to one single spreadsheet ad it would let me look at a game and all 4 factors I weight in at once. I then started looking for correlations as far as if these two systems liked a teams running matchup what happened, if these two systems like a passing matchup what happened and I started assigning point amounts for those things to get an accurate reading of what the score would be.

I actually thought about putting parts of my spreadsheet on google docs for yall to see but I'm not completely sure what all I want to disclose just yet.

My score system is designed to be very aggressive in predicting results, if you look at the big time computer systems that are out there they all put out a projection and a score and it is always withing a few points of the spread, thats not what I wanted. I wanted it to show me when there is a huge mismatch that is getting overlooked by the "public" and I can find a very favorable number. This weekend will be a BIG test.

To your turnover point, I've been doing some reading and listening to several different betting podcasts, etc... And someone I listened to made a good point. When weighting total turnovers or turnovers per game, the team that is turning the ball over more per game one week, seems to have a higher upside than the team that has fewer turnovers, as they know what they need to correct. (Vick and the Eagles still scare me though). In a more simplistic view, who is more likely to fumble the ball, a back who just fumbled, or a back who hasn't fumble in a couple games? The former is going to be taking EXTRA care of that rock.

There are still some other things I'm looking at (via suggestions of betting literature, podcasts, etc...) such as points per play among other things.

quote:To your turnover point, I've been doing some reading and listening to several different betting podcasts, etc... And someone I listened to made a good point. When weighting total turnovers or turnovers per game, the team that is turning the ball over more per game one week, seems to have a higher upside than the team that has fewer turnovers, as they know what they need to correct. (Vick and the Eagles still scare me though). In a more simplistic view, who is more likely to fumble the ball, a back who just fumbled, or a back who hasn't fumble in a couple games? The former is going to be taking EXTRA care of that rock.

That seems to be a pretty solid point, the only problem I see is there are teams out there who are great at creating turnovers (2009 Saints, 2011 Oklahoma State) and there are also teams like LSU and Alabama who over the past few years, rarely turn the ball over.

Don't take that as me overlooking your point though, I am going to dig into that a little.

Turnovers aren't worth as many points in college as they are in the NFL, because of fewer big plays in the NFL, field position is an absolute premium. Go look through some NFL boxscores and the team that wins the turnover battle wins like 70% of the time.

Right, I agree. What I gathered from my original point (which is something I just heard/learned), is that, your natural instinct is to think "Team A turned the ball over 2 times each of the last two games, so they will probably do it again". Lo and behold, in the game, Team A holds on to the ball for zero turnovers and now one of the premises for my bet are completely eliminated.

It's not a garaunteed indicator. It just signals "upside" sometimes.

Still learning and researching all of the different aspects of betting, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

quote:To your turnover point, I've been doing some reading and listening to several different betting podcasts, etc... And someone I listened to made a good point. When weighting total turnovers or turnovers per game, the team that is turning the ball over more per game one week, seems to have a higher upside than the team that has fewer turnovers, as they know what they need to correct. (Vick and the Eagles still scare me though). In a more simplistic view, who is more likely to fumble the ball, a back who just fumbled, or a back who hasn't fumble in a couple games? The former is going to be taking EXTRA care of that rock.

There are still some other things I'm looking at (via suggestions of betting literature, podcasts, etc...) such as points per play among other things.

Very interest science to sports betting.

Look at Bill Connelly's S&P rankings on football outsiders. He breaks turnovers down into the flukey variety (fumbles) vs. the possibly repeatable variety (shitty QB who throws to the other team) and takes this into account in his rankings.

Basically his rankings are meant to decrease the huge effect that turnovers have in dictating the outcome of the game, and thus be more predictive by looking at the things that tend to have a strong predictive value (e.g. explosiveness) vs. events that are mostly random (fumbles) and thus have no predictive value.